I recently read a blog post online and wrote the following in response.
Thanks for your post. Two things you said stood out to me. First, you said, “The gospel message is simple enough for a child to understand.” I’ve had a privilege to teach many children, especially orphans, and also to teach those who teach children. I love to keep things simple. And like Rick Warren says, “Simple doesn’t mean simplistic”. I think the words of Jesus, saying, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” Matt 18:3 ESV, and other scriptures like the one you cited allude to a beautiful simplicity about salvation. In the scientific community, many of the greats know something that the crowd doesn’t know. And that is that there is a true beauty in simplicity. The most complex things in the universe when well-understood turn out to be beautifully simple. You can think of Einstein’s equation E=MC2 and many other beautiful representations of complex natural phenomena like that. There is even a sense in which making things complex is a sign that we don’t truly understand them as we ought to. When we understand things well, we can boil them down to the core principle. And that core is usually simple and beautiful.
You also said, “Coming to salvation is not a theology quiz but is directed by the Holy Spirit within a human heart. The essentials stand together to ensure that an emotional decision is based on a structure of belief”. I agree with that. As we know, research has shown us two things. First, we make most of our decisions using our unconscious mind. We don’t actively think about them. Second, we make decisions with our emotions and then rationalize them with logical explanations. Social scientists know this and those in the advertisement industry know it and use it to influence our buying decisions. I think while it’s crucial for those of us who have already had an emotional heart-to-heart encounter with God (that led to our conversion) to make logical sense of the experience we’ve already had, we must be careful not to think that those coming to faith also need a logical reason to come to faith. The Apostle Peter tells us, “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.” 1 Peter 3:15 NIV. Indeed, we should be ready to give a logical reason. But that doesn’t mean that most people will ask for one.